John Rodriguez delivers a big hit
Thursday, March 13th, 2008I understand that Rays-Yankees II was the bigger national story, but the thing you should be most happy about coming out of yesterday’s game is that John Rodriguez finally delivered a big hit – just his second of the spring – to help the Rays win the ballgame. Look, I’m not taking anything away from the zombie-looking Shelly Duncan or his 40 games of big league experience, but this guy doesn’t represent anything “dirty” about the Yankees. Maybe it speaks a little bit to Joe Girardi who either can’t or didn’t choose to stop Duncan from doing that, but its mostly just one hot-headed career minor leaguer who decided to act like a tough guy. Even the hit batsman earlier in the game was later called by virtually all sources “likely unintentional.”
But no, the bigger story was John Rodriguez finally delivering a big hit – a hit he DESPERATELY needed for his stat line – to lead the Rays to the win yesterday. (Recap/Box)
His batting average still isn’t pretty – sitting at .083 – but if he hopes to compete with Eric Hinske and Jon Weber for the final outfield position on the roster, he’s going to need to come up with big hits like this one.
You have to wonder if any number of hits is going to be enough, though. By all accounts, Rodriguez is a corner outfielder because of his fielding ability and speed to the ball. Same with Weber. Eric Hinske, meanwhile, is a converted infielder who plays the corners because he needed to stick on the roster. He’s definitely not a centerfielder. With Justin Ruggiano now playing with the minor leaguers, who is left that can play centerfield?
Ben Zobrist got a look there before his injury, but he’d have to be considered a project at best. You could always slide C.C. over if you had to, but he’s never seemed to be comfortable as a centerfielder. After that, there’s really no one else, unless you begin to look outside the organization.
At this point, I still think Eric Hinske is the front-runner – experience plus ability to play two infield positions on top of the outfielder – to join Willy Aybar, Elliot Johnson, and Shawn Riggans on the Rays’ opening day roster, but that could change if the club goes the anti-Evan Longoria route.
Aybar has been hitting well lately, likely causing the Rays to think that – if they had to – they could send Longoria down to AAA to start the year and still have capable hands covering third base. Let’s say, for instance, that happens and all of a sudden Willy Aybar is the starting third baseman and there’s an open roster spot. Immediately you think that Joel Guzman is probably the front-runner for that spot, but with the way he’s looked this spring and his inability to play the outfield, that’s not necessarily a slam dunk.
These next few weeks should play out very interestingly as we try to figure out who exactly will be in uniform when the ump yells “Play ball!” in Baltimore.
